


The Endless Rise

by midnightflame



Series: Homecoming [12]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dark Shiro (Voltron), Defiance, Hinted experimentation, Keith finally gets a flash of hope, M/M, Psychological Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 20:49:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9402392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: So close to everything he wants, Keith faces his final challenge.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last bit we will see of Dark!Shiro now, so I hope things have come a bit together on that front. And hey, it's the last time Keith has to suffer really during this series. As before, this is not being written in sequence, and there is some violence so heed any warnings. Enjoy!

He doesn’t recognize this room. 

Even if Keith were to try to define it, that very definition would be based in its absolute emptiness. There is nothing here, just a square room with a high arching ceiling, purple light tracking along the floor and racing up along the walls like some elaborate game of ladder that ultimately took you nowhere. 

No grand decision reached. No destination marked. Just endless lines feeding into one another. 

A room with no purpose. 

Standing opposite one another are the entrances (or exits - it’s all relative to where you stand, right?), both of which have failed to respond to his meddling and have left him stranded. A frown pulls at the corners of his mouth as Keith folds his arms over his chest, and just when he thinks this must be some new Galran torture technique, the farthest door opens with a satisfying _schlick_. 

“Shiro?!”

Keith starts to advance quickly across the room, his frown turning troubled when the name fails to get him any semblance of a response. Instead, Shiro continues to stand in the doorway, his head bowed as if listening to something just outside. Not so much as a flick of a glance in Keith’s direction. He slows as suddenly as he had begun, suspicion interlacing with concern as he pulls to a complete stop ten feet from where Shiro stood. 

Just outside the doorway, Keith catches the faint purple edge of an all too feline ear.

“You have your orders.”

 _Sendak_.

“Sir.”

And there is something horrible in the way that word comes out in Shiro’s voice, clear and deferent. Perfect soldier imbued in every angle of his body, in the faint nod of his head, accepting, Shiro turns and steps into the room. The door slides shut behind him, and Keith only has seconds to think before the first fist hits him right in the ribs and sends him skipping several steps back towards the center of the room. 

“Shiro. . .what the hell. . .?!” Keith coughs out, clutching at his side. 

But there is nothing there, not of Shiro. A memory flickers to life, his hand inadvertently touching his throat as the images jump in and out of his mind. Shiro takes another step forward, cracking his neck then giving his left shoulder an easy roll. 

The sound of popping joints is almost nauseating. Overworked or overdone and needing the release, and all Keith can stare at is the dark splash of a bruise over Shiro’s cheek and the way it looks deeper and uglier under the purple lighting than it had the day before. His gaze finally catches Shiro’s, but there’s something far darker, far more brutal living in there now than the wounds worked over his body.

It still puts the same ache into him. Because something has been done, cruel but far from careless. It has warped the man standing before him into something entirely different but not far enough beyond recognition. 

Because Keith still sees Shiro, and isn’t that worth fighting for?

He’s better prepared for the second hit, blocking with his left arm though his ribs remind him of the first punch he had taken. Shiro comes in for the third with his lips twisted in delight, and it takes just enough off of Keith’s reaction time to let the fourth hit power through, hard and fast along his jaw. 

“Shiro! Shiro – stop! This isn’t you!”

The fifth attack takes out his left knee, dropping him down hard onto the right.

“Shiro – it’s Keith! I’m here! Don’t you recognize me?!”

He rolls out of the way as Shiro’s foot attempts to descend upon his head. The silence is killing, only further feeding into his desperation. As Keith regains his footing, he dashes forward and locks his grip around Shiro’s right wrist after dodging the initial punch. He turns, swift and sharp, and just as Shiro’s body slides past his, Keith goes to hook his leg and. . .

The air rushes out of his mouth in one harsh cry, pain cutting deep into his side. Around him, the lights start to buzz; they dance like shadows before a flame, in and out of his vision. It’s seconds later before he realizes he’s on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and Shiro’s grinning face. 

Everything is so wretchedly wrong.

Shiro’s right hand wraps around his shirt, and as the breath floods back into his lungs, he’s hauled back onto his feet and thrown against the nearest wall. He can just make out the thick strip of lighting installed above one of the doors across from him, but it’s Shiro, standing there dark and damning and so very amused, that holds his attention. Or the pieces of it that he can muster together. Right now, his head is spinning, his breath erratic, and everything screams that it hurts in one way or another. 

“Shiro. . .” he murmurs as the world flashes black before him.

*

Keith thinks he recognizes this room. It could have been like any other number of rooms on the ship, completely empty with that same fucking purple lighting lining its walls and its two exits standing just opposite, only there’s blood on the floor over by one wall, and it stirs the unpleasant ache of that memory in his chest.

Shiro is waiting for him this time, and Keith thinks he is prepared this time as well. 

When Shiro advances, he manages to hold him off for longer than he had yesterday. But that violent delight that burns in Shiro’s eyes and the way his lips curve with predatory joy breaks him in ways he has never quite been prepared for – losing Shiro one day? He’s considered that. Just not like this. 

He won’t lose him like this.

So, when he falls, Keith gets back up. And when he rises, Shiro is there waiting to drive him back to his knees until the world blurs black and purple and the breath comes in desperate gasps until everything falls to a deadening stop.

*

Keith knows this room.

There are two exits, and there is blood on the floor, and Shiro is standing there, a familiar menace, right in the center of all this emptiness. 

The first hit lands three minutes into the fight this time, a record Keith quietly notes (because he’s been counting and watching and waiting), and this time, when he parries and turns, it’s Shiro’s back that finds the wall and not his own. 

“Shiro, wake up!”

His voice sounds off, like gears rusted and forced into movement, forgotten but stumbling into working order. 

“This isn’t you! It’s never been you!” he grounds out harshly, one hand fisted in Shiro’s shirt, the other pinning his wrist to the wall. Shiro is close enough to touch, close enough to kiss, and Keith hates that he thinks of these things now when Shiro is so far away from him. “I _need_ you. . .”

Something pulls the mirth from Shiro’s expression then, the smile trembling then dying over his lips. Keith breathes in sharply.

“. . .please. . .” comes as a hushed murmur, a single word built on hope.

Shiro’s brow knits together, eyes shutting, and he exhales out slow and steady.

Just before he’s thrown back, their eyes meet, and Keith wants to laugh, really and honestly laugh. This time, when the world bleeds black all around him, there’s a smile sitting satisfied on his lips.

 _I'm still here_. 


End file.
